Well, I’m home at last - in more senses
than one! Admittedly, I’ve been home from my Navy deployment since late
December and have seen many of you since then, but that’s not the
complete story. I’ve also more recently moved off the ship into my own
apartment, which is a really, really nice thing. I can’t describe the
joy of moving away from a ship where I lived with 70 other people in
the same room and could not easily escape from work or find a place of
my own. And thus I gladly say that I am writing this post from my
apartment and will be sleeping on my very own and very comfortable bed.
Now on to the deployment. We left Florida’s Naval Station Mayport
July 24th 2007 and returned home December 21st, having visited (at
least briefly) Key West, Columbia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Panama
(multiple times). We caught two major drug shipments, each of which was
the second of its kind in naval history and whose combined value was in
the hundreds of millions. I left as an Electronics Technician Third
Class (paygrade E-4), and was known as ET3 Strickland. I returned
ET2(SW) Strickland, meaning I both advanced one paygrade and completed
a major qualification known as Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist
(ESWS). I experienced extreme tiredness and seasickness; I was also
able to visit some great countries, read some great books, and save a
good deal of money.
It was a long deployment, and I can’t say I particularly enjoyed
being away from home and out to sea for that long - but then again, I
think most of the sailors on my ship would say the same thing. But we
made it through and we’re home, and I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
We’ll deploy again before too long, but that’s the Navy way.
Click here
to see some pictures taken during the deployment, and feel free to
email me if you want more information about any of them. I’d like to
say I’ll eventually put descriptions with each photo, but that probably
won’t happen. So enjoy the pictures and imagine some elaborate plot to
go with them.
This article describes our first drug bust involving a semi-submersible craft full of cocaine.
This article in the Mayport Mirror
describes our deployment and mentions our second major bust where we
discovered liquid cocaine being transported by a shipping vessel.
It’s great to be home!
